Chapter Text
I never wanted to.
She should want to. Rey should refute the bond and everything Ben implied that it stood for. Whatever connection bridged between them should terrify her, make her afraid that she laid the secrets of the Resistance at his fingertips.
Her mind skipped backward. A broken hologram showing the same two seconds of footage over and over, reminding her again and again of the uncertainty that marched her lungs into mush.
What do you want, Rey?
I never wanted to.
What do you want, Rey?
I never wanted to.
Awakening disoriented in Snoke’s escape pod, understanding only that Ben was not beside her, as she expected him to be.
What do you want?
I wanted to take your hand. I wanted to stay with you.
Just not the way you wanted. Not with an entire galaxy looking to us in fear and awe. Not with our lives at constant risk, with a war nipping at our heels like starving ripper-raptors waiting to tear us apart.
I want to protect my friends. But I also want to know what my life would be if, for once, for once, I chose me.
The lightsaber was repaired, though imperfect. The obvious welding she’d done was covered by a thin leather band, giving the lightsaber a clunky, unnatural look. It still sighed back into familiarity, allowing Rey to wield it as she had before. At arm’s length, a weapon with the bare-bones outline of a reluctant connection. An extension of herself that only gave a little resistance during her practice sessions. Like a dormant limb spent too long asleep to be properly roused again.
When she ignited it once more against a foe, she wondered if Kylo Ren would be on the receiving end of her blows. If she could bring herself to take an offensive pose against him once more.
If she could, should the time come, strike him down.
Immediately, her mind revolted against the idea. Making the saber in her hand spark, the crack between the crystal halves reacting to her negative emotion. Rey took a deep breath, extinguishing the blade and clipping it back to her belt.
We are enemies, she reminded herself.
Even if the idea made her chest twinge with a hairline fracture pain that reverberated from her heart.
As though exacerbating her own follies, the Force deigned her unworthy of Ben’s presence. Days of silence passed, and Rey had to wonder if he hadn’t taken it upon himself to close the bond. But no. No, she could still feel him there in the back of her mind. A small, steady hum of life that made her insides twist and buzz like faulty wiring in an old starcruiser.
She wondered if it would eventually cast her in flames. If she’d combust from the pressure, cresting fire like ocean waves from inside her body. The sparks of her denial setting her ablaze from the inside.
The Resistance carried on around her. A statue in a glowbug garden, it was as though the rest of the base had no qualms forging onward toward their vision while Rey remained stagnant and still. Alight with their internal goals, the illumination they cast was far too focused to catch Rey lost in the darkness.
Unintentional isolation persisted. Rey often found herself seated atop the Falcon, watching the bustle of her fellow soldiers and feeling so far removed that she felt as though she were watching a holovid.
Every now and again, however, Finn would join her. Though the conversation was never what she wanted it to be.
“He’d apologize, you know. If you talked to him first.”
It had been two standard weeks since the reconnaissance team had suffered severe damage to the few X-Wings the Resistance could call their own. Which meant it had been two weeks since Poe had thought Rey worthy of a conversation that wasn’t him spewing his vitriol for her remaining planetside.
Rey said nothing, instead occupying her mouth with another tough bite of bantha rump jerky. Preventing her teeth from doing worse, like gnashing over Finn’s words and spitting them at his feet. This wasn’t the first time he had approached her in an attempt to bridge the gap between his friends.
A deep sigh, and Finn gestured vaguely to the bag of jerky Chewie had gifted her. She hesitated, pursing her lips and having to remind herself that food, once scarce, was far more accessible here.
Even if she was as alone on Ajan Kloss as she had been on Jakku.
Still, she shuffled the bag around and pulled the smallest piece of dried meat from it. If Finn noticed, he chose not to comment.
“Like, I know you’re mad,” Finn continued around his half-full mouth. “I would be, too! Poe just… He feels everything so strongly, you know? And he’s reactive. That emotion doesn’t have anywhere to go but out for him.”
“He would’ve made a terrible Jedi,” Rey mumbled, making Finn chuckle.
“Good thing it’s you, then, huh?”
I am not a Jedi, she wanted to say, to scream, but her disagreement would fall on deaf ears. Or Finn would say, Not yet, as he so often did when she found herself lost in the fray of Luke’s tomes.
The more she read, the less convinced she was that being a Jedi befitted her.
“I do get where he was coming from,” Finn said after letting out a deep sigh. “I’m not condoning what he said, of course, but I get it. It’d be so nice to have you out there, helping guide us and keep us safe. But I know what you’re doing here is important, too. Like, you fixed your lightsaber, that’s so incredible! Definitely necessary. That type of stuff takes time, I get that, but––”
But.
But.
But you’re here, and we need you there. But you’re doing as we requested, yet we still need more. More and more pieces falling away like rotting flesh in the desert, until nothing is left of you but the skeleton hidden beneath your skin. And then we will use that to forge weapons, so you may continue to fight as the symbol we’ve made of you.
“––you know?”
Blinking back into herself, Rey again looked at Finn. Her mind was too much of a tangled mess to properly parse together what he’d said.
“What?”
A pitying smile was all she got in response, along with a firm clap to her shoulder. “Just think about it, okay? I’m sure, if you just talked to Poe, you could get it all sorted out. He’s stubborn, but he’s embarrassed about the way he acted, too.”
“Why is it up to me?” she asked, the words rolling off her tongue as Finn moved to stand. He looked at her, brows raised, and resituated himself beside her.
“What do you mean?”
“I mean, why am I meant to talk to him when he’s the one who went berserk and yelled at me?” Rey asked, all the questions that had been roiling beneath the surface suddenly sprouting from the cracks in her demeanor. She shouldn’t do this. She should bite down on more jerky, if only to keep the upset locked away. But it was too late, and she was so tired. “Why am I expected to approach him when he won’t do me the same courtesy?”
“He’s just stubborn, Rey.”
“Am I not allowed to be stubborn?” she retorted. “Am I not allowed to be furious over being spoken to like–– like––”
Like nothing. Like a traveling stage show.
Like a weapon.
“You’re allowed to be, yeah,” Finn emphasized, tilting his head curiously to one side. “I guess I just don’t get why you still would want to be. Aren’t you tired of being mad at him?”
Her anger was the only reason she was able to remain standing most days.
Not that Poe was the sole source of that anger. The base of it was much deeper, much less concise. It echoed up from some distant chamber; a caged monster howling its discontent from the depths of a cave.
“Just consider it, alright?” Finn asked again, shooting her a curious look before he stood and stepped away. Using the ladder she’d planted against the side of the Falcon to take his leave, and she wanted to kick it after him. Leave it lying in the dirt to prevent anyone else from seeking her out.
She wanted to board her ship, turn off the nav, and jump into hyperspace without a destination. Find a way to camouflage it, or trade it in for a different model, so no one else might track her down.
She spent the rest of the day sitting in the co*ckpit, considering just that. How simple it would be. How she could slip away, and no one would notice until they once again needed her strength. Her power.
Never her, not really.
The only person in the galaxy who ever looked at her as anything more than what she was able to provide was––
“Ben?”
His name was a whisper. An unintentional slip, like it’d snuck between the slight part of her lips to find life in the open air of her quarters. She’d never attempted this – never tried to open the bond on her own. It was always a surprise delivered by will of the Force. An unexpected and often unwelcome gift shoved in her arms at the most inconvenient moments.
But now, he was the only person she could fathom wanting to see.
“Ben,” she whispered again, jaw trembling, “please. Please bring him to me.”
The Force remained silent. The bunk around her suffocating in its emptiness. The bed beside her cold and firm.
She was alone.
“Please,” she said again, turning over and clutching the pillow that might belong to him, in another universe. “I’m–– I’m sorry. Ben. I’m sorry.”
It was on the final syllable of her apology that the Force faded in, sucking the air from her lungs as Kylo Ren stepped through the threshold of her door. Like entering the doorway from her wildest dreams, he was dressed as a soldier, wearing a mask soldered together with some type of red polymer that gave the cracks in this renewed façade their own personality.
Rey sat up, eyes wide as Kylo reached back. Releasing the clasps of his mask and yanking it roughly over his head.
He looked haggard. Afflicted with an exhaustion that went beyond flesh and bone, reverberating up from the depths of his soul. The bruising circles beneath his eyes were nearly black, made that much more prominent by the sallowness of his skin.
He set the mask aside, never taking his eyes off her.
“You’re here,” he breathed as he pulled his gloves off. Blinking a couple of times as though attempting to verify her existence. “Are you here?”
“I’m here,” she assured him. Scooting on her knees to the edge of the bed. “You look so tired, Ben.”
The belt came off next. Shamelessly removing it and his shirt, so only his arm guards remained. Boots and socks both disappeared as soon as they were kicked away, and Ben approached her slowly. Carefully. Stopping before her knelt form, his hands twitching like they wanted nothing more than to reach for her.
She wouldn’t stop him.
She wanted him to touch her. It almost took her aback, how desperately she craved a touch she’d never truly known.
“You seem… terribly sad,” he responded softly.
The tears she’d been suppressing for what felt like years reared up all at once. Slipping down her cheeks and blurring his visage, making her blink rapidly to clear her vision. The Force could rip him away at any moment – she knew that –and the prospect of not absorbing every exhausted inch of him before it did felt blasphemous.
“Rey––”
“I’m sorry,” she interrupted. Regurgitating the apology that had brought him to her. “I’m sorry, Ben, I never meant it. This–– You are the only thing that feels solid to me, the only thing that feels real. Nothing else makes sense except you. And that terrifies me.”
Boldly reaching out, Rey grasped at his hands, stopping just centimeters from the warmth of his flesh. She looked at him, imploring his forgiveness. Begging his understanding.
He didn’t hesitate to close the distance.
Taking one hand in his own, the other came up, gently brushing his thumb through the streaks of moisture left behind with her crying.
“Rey,” he murmured. “What happened?”
Her breath hitched on a sob, and Rey felt her weight drift into his palm. Letting the warmth of his skin seep into her cheek. She clutched his other hand, suddenly bereft at the idea of not being able to feel him. Bringing it up to her chest and holding it like she could suffuse the sensation of her beating heart straight into his fingertips.
It was he who controlled the vitality of her pulse, anyway.
“I feel like I’m being torn apart,” she admitted, watching the way his chest shuddered around his next inhale. “Like I’m expected to be in so many places, supporting the weight of their resistance on my own. Like I’m just––”
“A weapon,” Ben finished when she broke off with another sob. “A tool for their gain.”
Rey nodded.
“They want me to be this Jedi symbol, as Luke was, but…” She shook her head, dragging her skin against his. Pressing her face into the calloused flesh to bury her admittances beneath, further away than anyone else might ever find.
“The Jedi, as often as they are viewed as an epitome of good and right, are not quite as the rest of the galaxy remembers them,” Ben said. Slowly, carefully keeping her hand trapped between his and her chest, he spread his fingers out. Digits stretching up past her collar and along her sternum. Keeping her in place with further touch. “As much as anyone else would blame the former Emperor, it was their own hubris that led to their destruction. They were always destined to fail, whether by the hand of the Sith or by any other opposition. Palpatine was simply the first person who identified the single brick in the foundation that would allow it all to come tumbling down.”
“Why do you believe they were destined to fail?”
“The Force will not allow one singularity to maintain power,” Ben explained as Rey slipped her hand from between his and her chest. Allowing the weight of his palm to press fully against the flutter of her heart. His fingertip brushed her throat, and Rey’s eyelids grew heavy as she wrapped a loose hold around his wrist. It was unbearable, how good his touch felt. “More than anything, it craves balance. The gray that shines between Light and Dark. Too much in one direction tips the scale, and the Force finds a way to correct itself.”
His words burned through her chest. Leaking Mustafarian magma along her ribs, ripping through her insides until she was but flesh-wrapped ash beneath his fingertips.
“Then what are we?” she asked – pleaded. Begging for clarity, for him to negate what was so obvious to her. They would remain on opposite sides as the enemies they could no longer be. “You and I? What do we represent, if not either side of this eternal struggle of the Force?”
Ben stepped so that his thighs pressed against the mattress. Spine curling, he bent close enough that his forehead could fall against hers. Breath hitched in her lungs, Rey’s eyes fell shut of their own accord. Taking the briefest moment to relish in this casual, impossible touch. The distance of star systems blending together if only so she could know the warmth of his skin.
“I don’t know,” he said, his voice cracking down the middle. A fracture through the snow on Starkiller, meant to tear them apart.
“Will you kill me?” she asked. “If you must?”
“No.”
His answer was immediate. Certain. Making more tears fill her eyes and spill down her cheeks.
“But you will kill me,” he continued. “If you must.”
How can I? she wanted to ask. Knowing what I know?
Feeling as I feel?
She shook her head, that refute on the tip of her tongue. But the words were siphoned from her mouth the moment his lips pressed against hers.
Every thought she’d ever had drained from her mind. The river of her tremulous beliefs as dry as any desert, save for the small crack of moisture in the sand that breathed his name. A tiny, pulsating well that beat Ben, Ben, Ben, as his lips moved against hers.
“And if you must,” he rasped, the hand on her cheek moving and shaping itself to hold her in place, “please, just let me have this.”
Refute buried in the graveyard of her regrets, Rey cupped his jaw in both her hands, drawing him back so they fell together into the sarcophagus of shared longing. Lips fumbling together as he finally climbed into her tomb, holding himself above her on trembling knees as she kissed him with every ounce of her inexperience.
“Ben,” she whispered, the word sacred against the shape of his lips. It was a tentative, splintered thing, the hope surging to life in her chest. Fine cracks webbed in an empty vase he kept filling, filling, filling with every deepening press of his lips against her.
Was there any other option aside from shattering around this newfound weight?
“Rey,” he groaned, her name dripping onto lips like moisture into the dry cracked earth. Absorbed beneath the surface to fertilize land left to decay under the scorching sun.
She fell backward, and he followed willingly, his weight resting atop her without breaking the contact of their mouths. Bracketing her body with his. Making Rey feel so small, safe and protected.
The hand on her chest eased upward until it could wrap loosely around her neck. Keeping her still, subdued, as his lips moved with hers. Giving and taking, pushing and pulling, until the Force itself was humming in soft contentment.
This, she thought as her fingers curled in his hair, is what our connection is for.
They weren’t meant to fight. They were meant only for each other.
He pulled back just far enough to look down at her. To meet her steady, unwavering gaze with stars of disbelief in his eyes. As though perhaps he was still dreaming, and had been since he walked into the room and found her begging his forgiveness on his bed.
“Ben,” she said, drawing him in once more. Pulling his attention to the reality of their existence. “Just be with me.”
The sound that slipped up from his throat was pained. Twinged in the same desperation that boiled beneath her skin, rising up from her internal ashes like a phoenix ready to take flight. Burning hotter, brighter, when his lips left hers, only to track the dried rivers of her tears, to meet the sensitive skin of her jaw. To kiss around the flexing fingertips that trembled against her throat.
“Cyar’ika,” Ben murmured, his tongue curling around a word she didn’t understand, but that made her body sing all the same. A light tug on the fabric covering her chest. “May I––?”
“Anything,” she was quick to respond. “Please, just don’t stop.”
Don’t stop touching me.
Don’t stop needing me.
The fabric of her tunic was pulled down, Ben’s lips never leaving her flesh as he exposed her. Baring pieces of her unseen by another. Brushing the top of her breast, the delicate line of her sternum, before pressing directly above her beating heart. Like his lips might discover the very essence of her pulse.
Her shirt was held together with a small tie against her hip, and Rey felt her own fingers fumbling against it. Yanking against the string until it unknotted, allowing Ben more access. More flesh for him to cover in those lips that whispered reverence in a lost language so softly she couldn’t quite understand.
Everywhere he touched her ignited a new type of fire that simmered beneath the surface. Erupting against the very blood in her veins, spreading with each rapid beat of her heart until she was consumed in burning desire.
How many times can one person burn to death and come back to life?
Or will Ben be the only person who might resuscitate me?
Breath stolen from her lungs, her body arched against his mouth as he sucked the puckered peak of her breast past his lips. Tongue swirling around the tight little nub, making Rey cry some hoarse variation of his name into the quiet of the room.
She didn’t know touch could feel so good.
The suction of his mouth had her gasping, fingers tangling in his hair and yanking him back up to her lips. The saltiness of her skin lingered on his tongue, and Rey licked it off, moaning when his tongue met hers with the same fervor.
“Rey,” he groaned; the only word he seemed to remember. “Rey.”
“You can have this,” she vowed, wrapping her legs around his hips and pulling him against her. Instinct guiding her to roll her hips against the bulge in his tight trousers. “You can have everything, Ben.”
“Don’t,” he rasped, throwing his head back in ecstasy. Rutting against her, the hard line of him pressing just so against the apex of her thighs. Rey cried out, sensation rushing through hyperspace in her body. Touching nerves of undiscovered star systems. “Don’t let me, Rey. I’ll take it all until there’s nothing left of you that doesn’t hold my imprint. Until you can’t move without feeling the echo of me.”
“Please,” was the only thing she could think to say. “Please Ben.”
What she meant was as much of a mystery to her as it was to him.
Please don’t let me go.
Please want me.
Please keep me.
Her fingertips trailed down the mostly bare length of his spine. Feeling the way his flesh pushed and pulled against the nodules of bone with every slow, intentional undulation of his hips. The grind of him against her, into her, an unnamed craving she hadn’t known existed until this moment. This almost-satisfaction that left her in want of more, more, more.
His gaze fell back to her, pressing his weight onto one arm as the other trailed down the smooth planes of her body. Neck to chest, resting for a moment on the round of her breast before bringing his fingers together to gently squeeze her abused nipple. Gasp catching in her throat as his hand fell further, dragging against the convulsing muscles of her abdomen and bypassing the heat of her core. Instead, he gripped her thigh, digging into the meat behind her knee and pulling her further open. Giving him more room to drag himself against her so, so perfectly.
A moan hitched against her larynx, stuck on the gasp still strangling her esophagus. They came out as one in some strange reverb, making Rey tuck her face against Ben’s neck to muffle the noise. Her tongue darted out, licking up the thundering pulse of his artery, and Ben grunted, bucking his hips against hers in such a way that everything within her clenched down in desperation.
All at once, she felt so empty. Empty in a way she wasn’t sure how to fill.
But Ben–– He could help, she knew. He could fill those empty pieces inside of her.
Only Ben.
“Please,” she whispered again, her voice barely discernible over the roaring blood in her ears.
“What do you want, Rey?” he asked, his own voice a strangled garble of words that hardly made sense to her mindless brain. “Maker, tell me what you want.”
Once the question set in, though, the answer was immediate.
“You,” she stated. “I want you.”
The sound Ben made at that was inhuman. Inexpressible by anything living. It was the sound a god makes when they’ve finally uncovered the meaning of their existence. When they’ve finally discovered the coveted truth of all life, immortal or otherwise.
His face fell into the curve of her throat, letting out tiny puffs of breath that lapped against her flesh like rough waves of ocean. Splashing into her topography with the sole purpose of eroding pieces of her away to keep for himself.
As if she hadn’t already told him it was his.
Her trousers came off easily. Slipping down her legs like they’d never much desired sitting on her hips. Ben knelt before her, eyes wide and mouth open in undeniable reverence as his fingers wrapped loosely around her calves. Gently stroking the flesh that had paled in her months on this jungle planet. Strips of skin only ever explored by her own hands.
Eyes flicking up, he met her gaze as he lowered himself over her. Pressing his lips to the curve of her knee. The lax muscle of her thigh, making it flex beneath his affection. Something dangerously close to a smile danced across his lips for a moment before they distracted themselves with the soft skin around her hip.
Rey let out a pitiful little mewl, pulling in a breath through her teeth that had Ben surging up to take in for himself. A mess of teeth and tongue and so much longing it felt as bound to her as the Force itself. An irreconcilable thing she hadn’t known existed until he’d brought it beyond her consciousness with a single touch.
So, too, began her relationship with the Force. Unveiled with a whisper of his presence in her mind. Impossible to ever tuck away again. An explosion of stars lighting up a night sky she hadn’t before known existed.
How much more of her could he possibly alter before she became unrecognizable? Before she became her true self?
The taste of him laid heavily on her tongue as his hands skirted up her naked thighs. Resting, squeezing the joint where her hips met her femurs, thumbs tracing nonsensical shapes into the soft, untouched skin there. Inching closer and closer to the apex and making Rey writhe beneath him.
“Cyar’ika,” he whispered again, the word falling from his mouth into hers. Tasting of the same longing that pulsed in her veins.
“All of it,” she reminded him. All of me.
A groan of promise, and his thumb dipped past that secret barrier. The one he’d erected in his hesitation. He touched her, inching through the wet that had unknowingly been accumulating between her legs and shocking an impossible sound from her lungs. A moan of wanton desperation.
The expression on his face was one of total deference. Eyes flicking from her face to the tiny piece of her he’d taken for himself like he wasn’t sure he believed that he was allowed to touch her. That she was allowing him to touch her. That, in fact, she wanted so much more than this simple touch.
Another featherlight press of his thumb to her wet entrance, and Rey moaned again, chasing the slight pressure with her hips. Ben gasped, his unoccupied hand pressing her thighs further apart so he could watch the way his thumb sank into her soaked lower lips. Still a tremor of disbelief written in the part of his lips, the shaky inhale of his breath.
“More,” she pleaded, surging up to grab him by the straps of his arm guards. Kissing him with every ounce of herself he didn’t already inhabit. “Ben, more.” Words spoken directly behind his teeth, making it impossible to misinterpret their meaning.
Cheeks flushing, Ben once more looked between her legs, maneuvering his hand until he could replace his thumb with a finger. It sank into her far too easily, the lubrication of her body giving him no resistance as he pressed in, in, in for the first time.
It felt like divinity. It felt like entirely not enough.
Soft, gently exploratory touches between kisses had her panting beneath him. Unable to articulate what she needed outside of soft, wet puffs of breath against his cheek. But Ben was so studious, so incredibly attuned to this body that felt far too foreign to still be hers.
The second finger met a tiny pinch of resistance. Nothing more than a sharp inhale that relaxed into a resonant moan vibrating from the deepest depths of her lungs.
“Rey,” he whispered in prayer. “Mesh’la. Cyar’ika. Kandosii’la.”
His fingers rolled in her c*nt like the leaves dance in the breeze. Soft, gentle waves that seemed to follow the pattern of nature, interspersed with intentional presses of his thumb to the button of nerves she only dared find in the darkest hours of night. At some point, his unoccupied hand had come up, tangling in the loose tresses of her hair as he guided her lips to his, then her head back to expose her throat to his onslaught. Striking new, impossibly familiar sensations that rocked from the base of her pelvis all the way to the top of her head. Every nerve ending setting sparks of ardor aflame as they zipped along her veins.
She built like a storm. Swirling clouds thickened, growing more and more dense as she rose higher and higher into the staticky atmosphere of this space cultivated for them alone. An ignition of lightning webbing through her, growing in intensity.
It burst to the ground the moment she fell apart. Burning everything beneath the soil until it was but a fiery chasm that only brought life to the fire of her desire for him.
Whatever sounds he pulled from the sudden crashing waves of pleasure he wrought from her body were swallowed down by his lips. Groaning around the taste of her finish, Ben’s teeth dug into the tender flesh of her bottom lip as she whimpered through the aftershocks. Hurricane slowly, gradually fading into a gentle shower that had her hips twitching with every ease and press of his fingertips against her inner walls.
“Mesh’la,” he said again in that language she wanted so much to understand. His voice was breathless, lips swollen with her affection. He looked down at her, his eyes so deep she could only hope she might drown in them. Swimming with more emotions than she knew how to name.
She wanted to plead again for more. But the words, dancing on the tip of her tongue, refused to find life in the scarce oxygen between them. Instead, trembling fingertips found the complicated clasp of his trousers, steadily meeting his surprised gaze as she unfastened them.
“Rey––”
“You have me,” she countered before he could give life to whatever protest she could see in his eyes. “You have all of me, Ben. Please, please tell me I have you, too.”
The furrow between his brows deepened. His eyes darted between hers like he was searching out the lie laced within her honesty. As though there was some falsehood to be found.
He didn’t yet realize how much truth she spoke.
Maybe she didn’t, either.
But, Maker, how she wanted to.
“I’ve never belonged to anyone else,” he finally breathed, releasing the wrist he’d grasped to halt her insistent exploration. “It’s just you, Rey.”
Just you.
Just us.
Never my enemy. Only mine.
It was naïve of her to ever think otherwise.
Trousers were shucked only far enough to release himself from their confines. Rey glanced between them, watching the way his appendage bobbed heavily. Tentative fingers wrapped loosely around it, marveling over how hot the skin was. How heavy it felt in her palm, the skin like silk wrapped around a thick steel rod.
Ben hissed when she squeezed, easing himself from her grip and settling back between her thighs.
“Too much of that,” he said, “and I won’t be in a place to properly satisfy you.”
She knew, from complaints around the base, what he meant. That those with co*cks couldn’t typically finish more than once. With a resolute nod, she brought her hands back up to his chest. Running her fingers along the planes and dips of muscle interrupted by the thick straps of his arm guards.
“You’re sure?” he verified as her hands drifted up his neck. “You’re sure you want me, Rey?”
“It’s only ever been you.” Fingers tangling in his hair, Rey brought her mouth back to his in a kiss that stole her breath and gifted it to him. “It will only ever be you.”
He eased her thighs open, moving until he was settled between them, as his other hand cradled the back of her skull. Pressing himself against her and dragging his length through the mess he’d left behind, like he had when they were clothed, but the intensity was so much sharper without a barrier between them. The heat of him so much brighter as he slickened his flesh with the residual wet of her org*sm.
“Oh, gods, Ben,” she gasped when the head of him nudged against that beacon of nerves. Sending pleasure in little shockwaves through her entire body. “Oh.”
“Hold on to me,” he murmured as he notched himself at her entrance. “Belong to me, Rey.”
As though her entire existence didn’t wager on both.
Stars.
The moment he pressed into her, the Force itself imploded around them. Not just bridging the star systems between them, but opening a vacuum where those systems did not exist. Where nothing existed but this, the connection of them. Blowing open the bond until they weren’t separate entities, but a singular soul inhabiting two bodies finally rejoined.
The stretch, the pain, was an afterthought to the mind-numbing euphoria of finally finding herself whole. So many years spent searching for a belonging that had been at her fingertips, just awaiting the moment she reached out to grasp it.
Her back arched, chest pressed against his as he f*cked into her. Making room for himself inside her body the way he had her mind. Rey locked her legs around his waist, falling into the slow, sensual glide of him within her. The stars gradually receded from her eyes until she could see nothing that wasn’t Ben.
Encompassing every touch. Every breath. His thrusts were slow and measured, each one a new jolt of electricity that rolled through her entire body like a x’us’R’iia.
Ben, her brain sighed as her mouth hungrily sought his throat. His jaw. His chin. Gods, Ben. Perfect. You’re perfect. You’re perfect.
He groaned in response, using the leverage of his hand in her hair to pull her lips back to his.
Rey, he whispered, his mind flooding hers now that the veil of star systems had lifted between them. Mine, mine, mine.
They moved together. The perfect synchronicity of two who had never truly been two. She did not have to ask for more, he simply provided it. He did not have to plead with her to leave her mark on his neck, it was already bruising. The shape of his teeth indented the flesh of her shoulder before she had to wonder what it might look like, and her tongue traced the line of his pulse as the thought of how much he wanted it touched his mind.
But her body – that was wholly hers. Wholly his. Sensation ratcheting up, up, up and dismembering every notion she had about this war and their respective places in it. There was no place where she belonged that he didn’t. There was no separation, not with the way he moved within her. The way he filled her, every ingress of his length spreading fire through the ash of her insides. Until he was deep enough that she felt him in her throat. Until he was so far within her that she prayed he’d never find his way out again.
“Touch yourself,” he murmured aloud, hand fisting in her hair and wrenching her skull back. Bringing his lips to her ear as he whispered, “I need to feel you come for me, cyar’ika. I need to feel you fall apart, so that only I can learn to put you back together.”
Nails bit their way down his back, making him suck a sharp breath in through his teeth when pain and pleasure mingled so harmoniously.
Two fingertips fell to that button of nerves, and Rey felt her entire body seize all at once.
“That’s it,” Ben said as her moans grew louder. Her pitch higher. Her body more taut, until she was a vice around him. “Stars, Rey, that’s it.”
A constellation forged anew when they fell apart.
It exploded behind her eyes, darkening her vision until all she could see was Ben’s whiskey-soaked irises as he watched her. As he fell within her, into her, painting her channel with warmth. Shuddering and quivering, he f*cked her through the aftershocks, keeping her afloat in the ether of that new nebula for minutes that stretched an eternity. That ended far too soon.
He kissed her as she floated back into her body. One hand gripping her knee as the other gradually relaxed in her hair. Lazy kisses, one bleeding into the next until she couldn’t be sure if it was two or a hundred shared between them.
“Kandosii’la,” Ben muttered, the word leaving imprints on her lips. His forehead pressed against hers, chest heaving with every panting breath.
Rey felt beyond herself. Half stuck in the clouds, her body wrung out and exhausted. Her fingers gently twirled through the sweaty hair at his nape, and she pulled him down for yet another kiss.
Comfortable. Complete. Whole.
The Force has allowed this for so, so long.
“Don’t leave,” she whispered when they parted. “Don’t leave me.”
Ben pulled back far enough to gaze down at her. His hand abandoning her knee to press against her heart in an echo of their earlier embrace. The heated weight of his palm pressing against her bare flesh like it had been carved to accommodate his embrace.
“How can I?” he asked. “I beat within you.”
They were allowed mere seconds longer before the Force enacted its cruelty. Stealing him away, the bereft emptiness of her soul only echoed by that of her body.
But, when she sat up, his liquid warmth dribbled out of her. And she wondered how many pieces of himself he left behind. How many pieces of her he took with him.
Two days passed, and Rey felt more and more empty with every lonely minute. She wished for him, as she had that night, but the Force remained quiet. Distant. Empty enough that she drove herself insane, wondering if she’d dreamt it all despite the bruises that littered her thighs, her chest, her neck.
She left the Falcon only to scavenge food, and only at hours that she knew she wouldn’t find another soul awake on base.
At dawn on third day, as her breaking point teetered ominously near, the Falcon’s dash chimed with an encrypted message.
The sender was anonymous. The trail itself had bounced around between sixty-three different planets before it found its way to her comm. Small enough to be sent beneath any radar, the only thing written in the message was coordinates.
Rey typed them into the holomap, watching as a nondescript outer rim planet popped into view. The coordinates were more exact, pinging a location that drifted just outside of the major city. Far enough away not to raise any alarm, but close enough to stow away for a brief period.
For the first time in days, a smile touched her lips.
That night, she crept from the Falcon’s gangplank, pulling a knapsack more tightly over her shoulder.
She’d been restoring the X-Wing Poe had ruined that day on Tatooine in her spare time. The tracking had been disabled in the blast, and it was the last thing she was set to fix before the ship was deemed ready for reconnaissance again. It sat in the hangar bay, awaiting its next moment of flight.
She sent a silent apology to the Falcon, knowing she would never see it again.
Stopping briefly outside of Leia’s quarters, Rey took a deep, slow breath.
Regret lives in all our choices.
She unclipped Anakin’s lightsaber from her belt, letting its familiar disregard stumble through her senses.
But happiness can grow around that regret.
Setting it on the floor outside of Leia’s door, Rey felt a weight drift from her shoulders to lay alongside that metal tube. To sink down into the dirt floor and find a grave in the earth beneath.
To bury itself in the cemetery of her regret.
I’m sorry, she thought, that I can’t be what you need me to be.
But I’m not sorry for this decision.
Slipping unnoticed into the hangar, Rey ascended the ladder into the X-Wing’s co*ckpit and flipped it to life. Making sure the tracker was never enabled, and making sure the comm was disconnected.
It took nearly a full day to get to the coordinates he sent her. But, as she grew closer, so too did the awareness of him in the back of her mind. The breathing, living thing their connection was, had always been, finding sentience after so many months of denial. It caressed the back of her neck, beating steadily beside the heart in her chest.
His heart.
As it had always belonged to her.
Whatever ship he’d left the First Order in was not the one awaiting her Begamor. It was a rickety older-model freighter, smaller even than the Falcon, though some obvious upgrades had been made to it recently. Rey slipped down from the X-Wing and trudged up the open gangplank, heart hammering in her chest.
Ben was in the engine room. Gone were his elaborate black robes signifying his place at the helm of the galaxy. Instead, he wore a simple black jumper and trousers, though the former had been discarded and tied around his waist as sweat dripped down his chest.
“Pass me that harris wrench, cyar’ika,” Ben grunted as he tightened something beneath the dual ion engine. Words stated as natural as breathing. “We’ll need this fixed if we want to be off this planet by tomorrow.”
Rey questioned nothing. She just set her knapsack down, rolling her sleeves up and doing as he asked.
They spent the afternoon in the engine room, then took to the city for supplies. Spare parts, food, water, and anything she so much as glanced at followed them back to the ship, where Rey kicked on the tracker for the X-Wing just before they left Begamor.
His hand laid atop the dash, charting a map to take them off the planet. The beacon blinked a couple of times, coming to life beneath his deft fingertips, and Rey watched in fascination as he plotted their course to keep them under any intergalactic radar.
The ship rumbled to life, and Ben piloted them into hyperspace with ease. Only then did Rey allow her hand to rest atop his.
“Where to?” she asked as his hand turned over, lacing their fingers together atop the dash.
Ben squeezed her hand, a warm, impossibly warm smile gracing his lips.
“Anywhere,” he answered. “The galaxy is no longer our responsibility. We are welcome to explore any part of it you’d like.”
He brought their entwined hands up, pressing his lips to the back of her knuckles.
“Anywhere but Jakku, that is.”
Rey paused.
“Was that… a joke?”
They laughed together. As one.
Forevermore.
